Principal AI Engineer

About the Company Taxwell is a leading digital tax filing platform formed in 2022 from the combination of Drake Software® and TaxAct®. These two longstanding organizations offer customers professional and do-it-yourself digital and downloadable products that are easy-to-use, best-in-class technology, and provide unparalleled customer support. Taxwell brands are a trusted solution for all users including those with complex tax returns. We strive to attract and retain candidates who exemplify our values: performance, perseverance, progress and partnership. Taxwell is an organization of forward thinkers looking to add industry experts to our growing team. About the Role We are seeking a Principal AI Engineer to lead the design, development, and deployment of AI-powered systems across the company. This role spans customer-facing AI capabilities, internal AI platforms and automation, and the creation of new AI-native products. This is a hands-on leadership role for an engineer who has successfully built production AI systems and can translate emerging AI technologies into measurable business outcomes. Responsibilities Design and build AI-powered applications for internal users and customers. Architect and deploy agentic and multi-agent systems that automate workflows and solve complex business problems. Build and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems using proprietary data and knowledge sources. Fine-tune, adapt, and evaluate foundation models for domain-specific use cases. Develop shared AI platforms, services, and tooling that enable teams to build AI-powered solutions efficiently. Evaluate and integrate commercial, open-weight, and frontier AI models. Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Security, and business stakeholders to identify and deliver high-impact AI initiatives. Establish best practices for AI architecture, evaluation, observability, governance, and reliability. Measure system effectiveness through experimentation, telemetry, and user feedback. Qualifications 8+ years of experience in software engineering, ML, NLP, applied AI, Data Science, or related disciplines. Proven experience designing, deploying, and operating production AI systems. Strong hands-on experience with LLMs, RAG, agent orchestration, and AI-powered applications. Experience designing and deploying agentic and multi-agent systems. Experience fine-tuning, adapting, or evaluating foundation models using techniques such as SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, reinforcement learning approaches, or other parameter-efficient methods. Strong understanding of model behavior, embeddings, retrieval systems, evaluation frameworks, and AI system performance. Strong Python development skills. Experience with vector databases and semantic retrieval architectures. Experience deploying cloud-native applications on AWS, Azure, or GCP. Strong systems design and architectural skills. Preferred Skills Background in machine learning, NLP, information retrieval, applied AI, or data science. Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), tool integration frameworks, and agent communication architectures. Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, ADK, CrewAI, AutoGen, or similar frameworks. Experience building AI platforms, copilots, or workflow automation solutions. Experience developing customer-facing AI products. Experience building vertical AI applications or domain-specific AI products. Experience in regulated industries such as fintech, tax, healthcare, or financial services. Equal Opportunity Statement At Taxwell, we believe our work benefits from the diverse perspectives of our employees. As such, Taxwell welcomes and celebrates diversity and inclusion and is committed to equal opportunity employment. At Taxwell, you can expect a supportive, open, and inclusive atmosphere and a team that values your contributions. Taxwell is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, and any other status protected under applicable law. Taxwell considers information gathered in the hiring process, including information on this application, confidential, and only shares it on a need-to-know basis or as required by law. If you need assistance or accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at HR@Taxwell.com or by calling 828-349-5887 to speak with a member of the HR Talent Acquisition. Show more Show less